Nicely done. I particularly liked the casual references to common cultural practices and the historical note wrt Saladin at the start, the impression of a knowledgeable experienced lecturer giving an introductory course lecture came across really well.

As I said, it sits oddly with me to see so many Hand-related concepts shown for the first time on the wiki in a GOC article, but the way to fix that is to write more Hand stuff — not actually an issue with this article.

This is super cool! Observation changes reality… The world is an infinitude of things that could be; even your looking at a computer screen right now is one of countless possible events taking place in your corner of the universe at this exact time, and when you forget ever doing it, or die without anyone else finding out, it will have never happened at all. The universe observable by you has no set shape until you check to see what it is.

Nearly every paranormal organization in the foundation verse has some magic users. The serpents hand is famous for them, and thaumatology is probably the science the Alexia Universe pursued. Most of the religious groups probably have them, and now the book-burners are actively contributing to their study. This is all well and good, but it begs the question: why doesn't the foundation have any magic users on staff? Besides mabey-type greens like Clef, the last time I heard of the foundation using what seems like a huge containment resource was 2799, which isn't in use any more. Does the foundation have a no magic policy because of cross testing danger?

The Douglas Adams reference reminded me of how similar this is to his discussion of "Bistromathmatics" - the idea that numbers behave differently in restaurants.

"Slowly, however; the implications of the idea began to be understood. To begin with it had been too stark, too crazy, too much like what the man in the street would have said "Oh, yes, I could have told you that."
Then some phrases like "Interactive Subjectivity Frameworks" were invented, and everybody was able to relax and get on with it."

This sounds a lot like that - "Magic is real? OMG!"
"Let's make it more scientific sounding: Thaumatagics."
"Oh. Well that's alright, then."